That's right, today Frodo went to the vet's office in the morning and to class (yes, a dog class!) in the evening.

We had an appointment this morning to get Frodo's 3 year Rabies vaccine. I was a little worried about everything, but did my best to stay calm so that Frodo wouldn't feel the need to freak out. When we got there I left him in the car while I went to check in. I asked if it was okay if I stayed outside with Frodo until his appointment as he doesn't always get along with other dogs (plus, I have no clue what diseases/illnesses the other pets in the waiting room might have!) and she said that was fine and she would come out and get us when it was our turn. Perfect.

I went out and got Frodo out of the car. At first he was quite overwhelmed with all of the smells available! He was a little too stressed/sniffy to take treats reliably, so we just kind of hung out in the shade. Then a dog came out of the office to go potty and as soon as Frodo saw it he was like "Mom! There's a dog, feed me!!!" which I was more than happy to oblige.

It's weird. I almost feel as though he wasn't sure what was expected of him until he saw the other dog and then his brain went 'Hey, I know how this works!'

We saw a few other dogs coming in and out of the vets, and he didn't show any signs of wanting to react to any of them *click/treat*

And we waited...for 35 minutes! That's right, they forgot we were out there. Which caused me to eventually be 15 minutes late for my shift today *facepalm*

When I finally decided that they had forgotten about us I decided to take Frodo in to let them know that we were still waiting. So we walked in and there was a panting/whining weim, a little poodle puppy, a few other way too fat dogs, and Frodo....didn't care. At all. We stepped off to the side to talk to the receptionist and he just chilled. Still focused and obeyed commands, took treats easily. I was *so* proud! He even made friends with the lady in the chair next to us!!

The exam went fine, the vet was awesome and moved slow. Vet techs loved him. Managed to do temp, physical exam, draw blood, and give two shots without so much as a growl. He wasn't happy or exactly confident, but he did better than I was expecting.

So that was our morning adventure, then we had an evening adventure as well...

(I am just going to copy and paste this from one of my dog forums as I'm too tired to retype it out, who knew dog training could be so tiring!)

I ran home and got Frodo when the 6:30 class was ending and when I got back some of the dogs from the 7:30 class were starting to get there. Frodo did a little low growling, but nothing close to a full blown reaction. We kept our distance from the other dogs and did easy stuff like hand targets, sits, downs, etc and his focus was spot on.

Then I did a stupid thing. There was a woman in the 6:30 class that I told I would give my easy walk harness to since I didn't use it. I knew her dog was over the top playful, built on springs, but I just caught her when she was going to her car so went over, got way too close with Frodo to her dog and he had a reaction. Duh, duh, duh Lauren *multiple facepalm*

The first thing the trainer did for the 7:30 class was to take the dogs out in the play yard for off-leash time. Frodo and I stood outside the gate and I rewarded him for relaxing. Which he did just fine, though got uneasy and growly if the dogs on the other side of the fence started to run around fast. Movement is DEFINITELY a trigger for him, and a hard one for me to set up a controlled environment with. So he did have reactions, but his rebound was very good.

Then we went inside and I kept Frodo in the office area (gated off from main area with a 3 foot door/gate) while the other dogs were in the main part of the building. Frodo did great so we moved out into the main part and he still did great!!! Neighbor dogs were about 6-10 feet away and he was fine with them. Not growly or anything.

I was even able to sit on the floor and feed Frodo and Violet (a very stable, awesome little Boston Terrier) at the same time! We had one time when another dog in class tried to approach Frodo and I body blocked her from him, which I think did more harm then good. He only growled, but I think I should have just moved away and called him to me.

Before leaving, the owners of a lab/poodle mix weren't really paying attention and let him walk/pull towards Frodo, and he growled. They pulled him back and a little while later he did it again and Frodo growled again. My trainer did say though after class that a lot of Frodo's reactions (not full blown reactions, but his growling) is appropriate for the situations that he is in. He doesn't make a mountain out of a molehill, so to speak.

Anywho, that is how it went. I am hoping that her next set of classes has a group that I feel comfortable enough to bring him with me again. He really did well and I am ecstatic at the idea that I may actually be able to bring Frodo into a class environment, which means that I can *gasp* take classes

Last but not least, one of the students made cookies for everybody! And she made a bag for Frodo even (she must have talked to my trainer, I don't know how she knew I was bringing him!), and he also got a squeaky toy like all the other dogs who graduated the class (special treatment I guess, ). There were human cookies, and then Oatmeal and Peach, and Cinnamon and Carrot dog cookies. She even included the recipes so I can make them again!

I am *so* proud of my boy today. He's currently zonked out next to me while I type this, and he's not going anywhere!

We've been on Sunday morning walks numbers 2 and 3 now, and it just keeps getting better!

Last week (#2) he didn't have any reactions at all. There were two new dogs there, a sheltie and an ACD, both of which he seemed to want to approach in a very calm way. I didn't allow him to though, he may be ready to actually meet dogs, but I'm certainly not! We were there early, as usual, and when the sheltie showed up they played frisbee in the field across the street, and even the running and barking didn't seem to phase Frodo all that much. The walk went well too, he really isn't stressed by the other dogs being there at all, and would even stop and sniff around while knowing that another dog was coming up behind us.

Then yesterday (week #3) he did just as well! I got up late and there were already some people at the grounds when I pulled up, which worried me because I've never gotten him out of the car with other dogs around before. He did get a little growly but wasn't pulling or barking. I ignored the slight growling and just headed in the other direction and he reoriented to me as soon as we started moving.

We did have one reaction and that came when we had to move through a doorway type setup in order to get from the actual fairgrounds to the parking of the fairgrounds. Frodo and I were going through fine when the dog behind us started barking (that dog is learning to settle down and be calm when not in the front of the group), causing Frodo to spin and growl/bark. Fortunately as soon as I got him moving forward again he pretty much dropped the whole issue and went on as if nothing had ever happened!! No sign of stress, no taking treats harder, no spooking at insignificant sounds, he just went on his merry way!!

Even my trainer commented on how quickly he was able to bounce back and continue on as if nothing had happened in the first place. A month ago that would have been impossible!

I am so proud of him!

Also, these past two weeks after the walk my trainer and I have been taking Frodo back to the doggy daycare and taking him swimming in their new 4ft pool. I wouldn't say that he loves it, but even yesterday as opposed to the first week he showed much improvement. The first week I had to pick him up and place him in the water and then he would swim. Yesterday, with the help of some food, we got him to go down the ramp without help, though he would only go as far as he could reach with his front paws, and then we had to help him to actually leave the ramp and swim. I have so much fun doing it, even if it's not Frodo's favorite activity!

Frodo and I went hiking in the rain at Ricketts Glen state park yesterday and had a GREAT time. It's an hour drive to get there but I am planning on making it a regular thing for us!

Another one for good measure.I really do plan on updating more frequently, but both Frodo and I have been super busy lately. I have been sticking to my training goal of taking him more places! We have been to the ATM, to Main Street, Ricketts Glen, and we even went SWIMMING!

I have been trying to work on the Protocol for Relaxation program with Frodo, and it was going well, until now. The past few times I have tried to work on it with him, he will get up and just walk away, like he has lost interest and perhaps there is something more fun to do elsewhere.

I am not sure how to remedy this. I don't want to put him in a down stay on the mat because I feel as though he should want to be on the mat and should be choosing himself to stay on the mat. I thought about treating at a higher frequency, but even then he seems to get bored and will still eventually get up and walk away.

Yesterday morning Frodo and I went to the Sunday morning walk and Frodo did AWESOME!

There were 4 other dogs there, he didn't have any full blown reactions though he did growl twice. Of the dogs that were there 3 were reactive (including Frodo), one is working on learning to settle and not scream when she can't socialize, and the other was just along for the ride I think. We kept the walk short as it was very hot and muggy out, which I was thankful for. Frodo does not do well in the heat at all, nor do I.

It was amazing, I wasn't nervous at all and Frodo spent most of the walk very relaxed and more interested in sniffing than in the other dogs. He did seem a little uneasy when we were ahead of everybody else, he continued to move forward but would glance behind every once in a while, so we moved to the side and let others pass us and he went back to good. I was amazed at how much easier it was for me to gauge threshold in that environment than when we are out on a normal day.

I had planned on posting Sunday as soon as we got back so it was still fresh and I could remember more, but then got sidetracked and forgot :|

Before everybody unloaded their dogs (I was there early and already had Frodo out) Silke and I worked on greeting people with a hand target. Silke made the comment that she could tell I had worked a lot on keeping his focus on me instead of other people because he sat there and looked at me when she was trying to get him to interact with her :pWe did eventually get him targeting her hand though, and this is something I am going to start forcing friends to help me with if they want to pet him. We were also able to work on this for a little bit before we left with another of the dog's owners.

In other news, we have been working on the Protocol for Relaxation and the whole thing seems to have really clicked with Frodo. His only issue is that sometimes I have to remind him that he isn't allowed to pop up to get the treat when I am leaning down to give it to him. I have been trying to find time to work on it every day, so hopefully I can take it on the road in a few days!The next spot to work is either going to be the park or Panera Bread I think, unless I discover a better place to work on it.

Last, but certainly not least, Frodo's Collarmania collar finally arrived!!!The font is a LOTR font called First Order and the rings are, well, rings...for the ring bearer(yes, I wave my nerd flag proudly!!)

The best picture I could get of it on him, he wasn't being the most cooperative dog ever.

It seems like a lot has happened over the past few days, and I've had no time to blog about it!

One small part of it is that I am now doing Sunday morning walks with a group of dog savvy people, some of whom are working with reactive dogs themselves. I went today and it was me, the owner of the local doggy daycare, Silke Wittig, and my gym teacher from elementary school!

I think this is going to be an invaluable resource over the course of the summer. The walk is at the local fairgrounds, so there is a ton of room to work and the atmosphere is so fluid and calm. They know that he is reactive and how to respond to a reactive dog, which is going to calm me down as I always get embarrassed when Frodo has a reaction in public. I left Frodo at home this morning, but I can't WAIT to start taking him next week!

In addition to that, I think I am going to start helping out at the local doggy daycare, Wagging Tail, for a few hours a week. I am hoping to really hone my dog body language skills while there, plus the owner offered for us to use her brand new pool at the facility! I would love for Frodo to enjoy the water enough to be able to get some low-impact exercise in. He hasn't had all that many opportunities to swim, though he has no issue wading through puddles of all depths, but I am hoping he takes well to it.

I am also going to observe/help out at two of Silke's dog training classes on Tuesday nights. Her intermediate obedience and her puppy class (squee! puppies! that I don't have to live with!), I am sure I will learn a ton from just being there and taking everything in.

In completely other news, I did take Frodo down to the fairgrounds this evening as it was just too cool out to pass up the opportunity. He certainly had a lot more energy! He ran around a lot more and then I got his cuz out (he will sometimes chase it in the house but is by no means obsessed) and he went bonkers! He was all about it! I would squeek it and he would focus with a side of more focus, like...herding breed focus and intensity. I would throw it and he would sprint after it and usually just kinda "meh" once he caught up to it. So I'd go over and pick it up, squeek it, same focus and intensity. Woohoo! A few times he picked it up and started trotting the other way, happy as a clam, then drop it after a bit and I would go get it and throw it again.

The past 2 days Frodo and I have run into quite a few dogs, children, and people (yes, I realize that children are people too) on our walks, with very mixed results.

But first, I am learning that Frodo is a much softer dog than I every thought, and that a lot of times what I have been considering a continuation of the sniffing and the slowness on our walks is actually Frodo shutting down. The majority of it I still consider to be just his personality and who he is, and he still does not go for long walks, even when he is completely not shut down.

However, the other day we were walking and I saw a man walking two shepherd mixes coming up behind us. I have seen him walking these dogs a lot over the last few years and I don't care for his methods at all. His dogs are completely scared of him and that in itself makes me nervous, and I have never seen them up close to other dogs before. He walks them on leashes that are probably 10 ft. long or more and they are never near his side or look like they are under control. Needless to say I did not want them running up on us, and with Frodo's normal pace there was no way they would not reach us before the next alley we could duck into.

So I tried to hurry Frodo along (talking in a happy voice and trying to keep him moving), but the last 30 feet or so I did end up dragging him past trees that he wanted to sniff and far enough into the alley that I thought he could work without a reaction as the dogs passed (he hadn't noticed the dogs following us at all). By dragging I mean I continued walking when he went to try and sniff trees, meaning there was pressure on the leash and he had to follow me. Instead what I got was a shut down dog that was offering calming signals and wouldn't show any response to my attempts at getting his focus.

So I have been trying to work on not pulling him away from anything that he has been sniffing on our walks since that incident. The problem is that I feel as though it is an impossible goal. No treat, no matter how high-value, is going to outweigh the pleasure of sniffing trees, etc. for him, and I don't have 4 hours to make it around the block. I'm not sure what to do on that front because I can't take a whole walk in the middle of roads with the way my town is set up and even trying constant reinforcement past places he wants to sniff fails. If it's not one thing, it's another!

In other news, that day that we had the incident with the shepherd mixes we also saw two American Bulldogs and a Poodle being walked (we saw the poodle after the shepherd incident, which tells me at least Frodo has the ability to rebound from being shut down in a fairly short amount of time), and Frodo didn't react to any of them. Granted, we weren't right on top of them, and I was even wondering whether he saw them at all since he didn't react, but if he didn't see them I know he could smell them. When I saw them I got him close enough to where I thought he would show interest but not be pushed past his threshold, and asked him to sit. I tried to play the LAT game, pointing out the dogs and everything, but he didn't want to look at them, he stared at me and waited for me to reward him for sitting. The same happened with the poodle!

Side note, but I think one of my biggest issues with training a reactive dog is that I am so bad at measuring distance visually.

Reactivity is such a pain in the butt because although Frodo didn't react at all to the dogs we saw that day, I know he has reacted to dogs that were further away than those dogs were! And I know he will again! I think one of the biggest reasons that he didn't react was because those dogs didn't even give him a second glance. They were well behaved and completely under control. I wish there were more dogs like that around here. I wish my dog was one of them.

In yet other news, we had a good and a bad experience with children. The bad experience happened toward the end of our walk yesterday, the same walk where we had the shut down incident and where we saw all of the well-behaved dogs. We were headed toward home in an alley and we turned the corner to find some kids playing in the alley. Frodo showed interest so I asked for attention, which he gave, and we moved forward. One little girl asked if she could pet Frodo. I thanked her for asking (I LOVE when they ask rather than just charge, though I have become quite good at body blocking, just in case), but said that Frodo didn't always get along with children.

So instead of saying okay and going back to playing with her friends, she stood as close to us as we walked by as she could. I could tell it was deliberate and fought the urge to physically move her out of the way myself. Now, everyone who knows me knows that I dislike children. I wish them no ill will, but I don't like them and prefer to not interact with them. Instances like these only further that dislike.

Regardless, Frodo ended up giving a low growl towards her as we passed (which did nothing in aiding her to move, by the way) and I did my best to hold his attention. While it didn't escalate beyond that, he was clearly signaling that he was uncomfortable with her being that close to him. It upset me because we had done so good that day with his triggers and he would have been fine had the little girl not been a brat and had I not allowed him to get pushed past his threshold. If I could do it again, I would definitely have turned around, though I decided against it yesterday because we had already been gone longer than normal and it was the only path that I knew to my house with no dogs.

I do feel that we somewhat made up for it this morning when we dealt with a daycare group. We were leaving my house and it was quite early in our walk and a familiar road. I heard them before I saw them, so I had time to get Frodo where I wanted him. I put him in a sit and as the daycare children crossed the street I rewarded him for looking at them. It was a success, absolutely no growling or posturing, though he was definitely interested. They were about as quiet as any group of 5-6 year olds in a group who see a dog, and Frodo took it all in stride. A few times he just focused on me and I even had to encourage him to look at the group so that I could mark it. Overall, it was great!

Those were the good and the bad experiences of our walks today and yesterday, but we also have made progress with the mat work. We worked on it this morning and he is probably at about 80% for going to the mat and offering a sit. I then mark it and throw the treat so that he has to choose to come back to the mat. For the end of the lesson I allowed him to stay sitting on the mat while I intermittently fed him treats. I think I am going to do one more session tonight when I get home from work and then tomorrow morning start the Protocol for Relaxation.

-Building focus/attention (Eh. I would say I failed at this. I didn't do any actual work on getting him focused)

-Trying to get Frodo more interested in training/actually trying to make me click (I would say this was semi-successful. We played the game Laura suggested with the box, and I think he did understand that the box was making me click. He even walked around the box, stuck his head in the box, etc. So he is offering behaviors, though he still gets disinterested and will wander away before too long. Probably more my issue than his. I need to increase reinforcement or something.)

-Continue low distraction LLW work (We are still far from a good LLW, but I would definitely say we are improving! More about the LLW later)

-FUN STUFF (aka: building our relationship) (Success! We have been doing little things like tug sessions every day and when I sit down to watch a show I have been brushing him or just sitting and petting him.)

June goals:

-Protocol for Relaxation: I need to work on this every day, if I can ever figure out exactly how to go about it!

-LAT game: Per Crystal's suggestion I need to start using this with Frodo

-LLW: Over the last few days I have been upping the criteria while out on walks. Now when he pulls I stop. I was letting him get away with pulling towards trees, bushes, etc. but now I stop dead and stay that way until he reorients to me and gives me a loose leash. Sometimes he will look at me and loosen the leash, then as soon as I take a step he tries to pull again. So again we stop and wait for him to loosen the leash and stick with me. It's been going really really well, I am super proud with his progress. It also allows us to work closer to things that he wants to sniff. Onward and upward on this front!

-Getting out and about: This isn't something that is going to start tomorrow or next week. I still feel like I have no control when he sees a dog or has a reaction, so I don't want to add my nervousness to the mix by taking him out of my comfort zone just yet. By the end of June though I hope to be able to do things like take him out to dinner or something like that. I can practice at Panera Bread (where I work) because I have room to get away from his triggers (I can go behind the building and I know people aren't going to follow or be) and it is also a place where I am comfortable. There does tend to be a few dogs there because it is off the highway and people travel during the summer, but I've noticed the dogs are usually under control and behaving more than I see in my town.

-Mat Work: I think I am going to start mat work again, but I may go about it differently. I think I am going to teach him to go to his mat and stay there, and then reinforce the calming signals he gives while on the mat, instead of the other way around. I believe that a better trainer would have more success the old way, but I feel that the new way is going to be less frustrating for me.

-Fetch: I need to get out the Cuz and work more on teaching him to fetch. I want a fetching dog pretty bad, plus it would be a great way for him to get exercise in the cold MN winter!

-Nails: Another hard one that I really need to buckle down and work on. I really want to be able to clip/dremel his nails without too much of a problem and without him fighting it. My goal is to be able to handle his feet and touch the nail with clippers or dremel by mid-May.

-Focus/Attention work: Same as last month. I want to actually find some type of program or something though, I tend to do much better and stay focused myself when I can do something like this. I know there was a program I started with my other dog. It was a levels program and I believe the author had llamas and schnauzers or PWDs. The background was purple or blue I think. :p

-Getting Frodo more interested in training/making me click: Again, the same as last month.

Of course I will be ignoring things on this list and adding more throughout the month. Hopefully I can stay somewhat on track!

Frodology101

About

A training blog about the trials (not the fun kind!) and tribulations of trying to get my 4 year old insecure, reactive, ill-mannered, thick-skulled Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Frodo, ready to move from rural Pennsylvania to the city of Minneapolis in the span of a summer. Grab a seat and sharpen a pencil, class is in session!